Improving darktable's interoperability: enabling user-friendly option to use darktable without library

[fabiosirna]

darktable is a popular photo editing software for professional photographers and enthusiasts alike. 
Users often wish to use darktable in conjunction with other programs (e.g., Digikam) for a more seamless photographic workflow. Currently darktable offers the option of using the program without the library, but this feature is not easily accessible to end users. To take advantage of this option, users must resort to unofficial and —for the less nerdy— sometimes complex-to-use solutions.

Solution for MacOS

I attach to the feature request a possible solution for Mac.
It takes advantage of the ability to launch darktable with the --library :memory: option. I have packaged under the guise of an app a script that launches darktable without a library. To differentiate it from the official app I called it darktable-db-less. It would be a great advantage for less terminal-savvy users to have it alongside the official app, like in this screenshot:

Solution for Linux

The solution for Linux is similar to the one for Mac and takes advantage of the same possibility of using a script that launches darktable with the --library :memory: option.

In the distribution I use —Debian— you have to create a Desktop Entry in usr/share/applications such as org.darktable.darktable-db-less.desktop which I attach to the feature request.

I imagine that this is standard for all other distributions, but I am not familiar with the mechanism in depth and am merely proposing the feature request.

Again, ideally, you should already have it available when you install the official application so that darktable-db-less is available in the menus of the various wm's and in the 'Open with...' drop-down menus of third-party applications.

Solution for Windows

I don't use windows and don't know the mechanisms for installing applications. I can imagine it being similar to macOS and Linux, but I imagine Windows users might be interested in Feature Request.

Attachments

MacOS example
darktable-db-less.zip

Linux example
org.darktable.darktable-db-less.desktop.zip

I can open a PR in draft (but only for macOS and Linux) and create the scripts if someone can direct me to the source code files / scripts / docs that are used during the build to create the launchers.

I'm happy to receive your feedback and suggestions.

[github-actions]

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